Page One
FAMILY
No matter how we try,
insisting we have no brother
and no sister in the universe,
we all are a part of it:
brother to the ant,
sister to the calendula,
uncle to the kangaroo,
and cousin to the star...
relative of the sloth,
stepsister to the birch,
keeper of our ancestors
in the city zoo.
Deny, embroider, experiment,
turn the beakers this way and that,
it all comes out the same again,
we are embedded, firmly cast,
just a throbbing part,
of sea and sand and jellyfish,
brother to the rock.